Lumumba Said It, One Day Africa Will Write Its Own History

In the stillness of the night, he was taken to a forest bound, beaten, tortured, shot and then believe it or not his body chopped into pieces with a hacksaw and then dissolved in sulphuric acid. This was the beastly end of one, who died a slave that the men and women of the Congo will live as free men. His name was Patrice Lumumba.
But to what evil did Patrice merit such butchering? Man’s beastly hate against man was only known during the days of slavery. It is no wonder to me that God after creation regretted he made man. He fore saw the days of slavery, in particular Lumumba’s end.

Lumumba was the Congo’s first democratically elected Prime Minister but twelve weeks later, the colonial power, Belgian helped overthrow him and honored with a firing squad.
Born 2nd July 1925, Lumumba lived to challenge Belgian rule much to their hate whiles the ever devilish C.I.A planned his assassination but to no avail. For Lumumba, the African had his own identity and did not need the false indoctrination of the foreign powers. Hear him “We are not Communists, Catholics, Socialists. We are African nationalists.” Lumumba was against ethnic division, forging a unified Congo, though with much resistance. He shared his love for the continent with Nkrumah who he revered as a Prophet to the black race.

It is a shame that men like Lumumba, who died January 17th, 1961 are only honored in death. May be its because they lived beyond their generation. He left you reading this piece these words;

“Dead, living, free, or in prison on the orders of the colonialists, it is not I who counts. It is the Congo, it is our people for whom independence has been transformed into a cage where we are regarded from the outside… History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington, or the United Nations will teach, but that which they will teach in the countries emancipated from colonialism and its puppets… a history of glory and dignity. ”

“The firewood of this world is for only those who can take heart, that is why not all can gather it,” said Awoonor the African Poet. Lumumba took heart and gathered it. The end of the struggle may be gruesome, indeed fatal to some, but the end glory is no where compared to the sacrifice and the danger we face.

As I lay my wreath, I do so knowing that whiles Congo lives, Lumumba lives, oceans of sulphuric acid cannot drown his living voice in the soul of Africa.
To you brother reading, and to you sister pondering these word, what will you say you did for your people when you meet Lumumba in the other world?

I lay my wreath.

“ We must move forward, striking out tirelessly against imperialism. From all over the world we have to learn lessons which events afford. Lumumba’s murder should be a lesson for all of us. ” — Che Guevara, 1964